Page 82 of Ruin
Adrenaline. Anger.
The particular fuel of a woman who hasn't decided what she is yet and runs on the friction of not knowing.
I sit on my bed, and pull my phone from my pocket.
A ridiculous amount of missed calls from Cassius.
No voicemails, though.
He wouldn't leave voicemails.
That would be a record, and Cassius Wolfe doesn't leave records.
I scroll through the call log. The timestamps tell a story: two calls last night, forty minutes apart.
Three this morning, closer together.
Then a gap.
Then five more back-to-back around noon, like he lost patience with his own restraint.
Then silence for the last three hours.
He's either given up or he's doing something worse than calling.
He's watching. Of course he's watching.
He has cameras, people, resources I can't even quantify.
He probably knows I went to brunch.
Probably knows I met Emilia.
Probably knows I sat in my car for six minutes afterward staring at nothing.
The thought should terrify me.
Instead, it lands with a dull familiarity that's somehow worse.
This is my life.
A man who murders judges and monitors my brunch dates and somehow, despite everything, is still the person my body reaches for in the dark.
Still the voice I hear when it's quiet.
Still the name I almost said when Emilia asked me what was wrong.
The absence of him is physical.
I didn't expect that.
I expected anger, and the anger is there, banked and smoldering and ready.
I expected disgust, and that's there too, mostly aimed at myself.
What I didn't expect was the hollow ache that lives in the space between my ribs and pulses every time I breathe, the place where his presence used to sit like ballast, keeping me steady.
Without it, I feel tilted. Off-center.
